Affiliates of U.S. and Japanese Multinationals in East Asian Production and Trade

Robert E. Lipsey ()

No 7292, NBER Working Papers from National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc

Abstract: Since 1977, and in some cases starting before that, most East Asian countries' export patterns in manufacturing have been transformed from industry distributions typical of developing countries to distributions more like those of advanced countries. The process of change in most cases started with inward FDI to produce for export in the new industries, particularly by U.S. firms in electronics and computer-related machinery. The U.S. firms were followed, in electronics, by Japanese multinationals. Over time, in most cases, the U.S.-owned affiliates turned more to sales in host-country markets and their share in host country exports declined, although the host countries' specializations in the new industries continued. U.S. and Japanese firms played somewhat different roles. U.S. firms' investments were always distributed more along the lines of U.S. export comparative advantage, far from the previous patterns of the host countries. The industry distribution of Japanese investments initially followed more the lines of the host countries' comparative advantage and Japanese affiliates were less export-oriented than U.S. affiliates. However, Japanese affiliates have become more like U.S. affiliates in both export orientation and industry composition. Their early concentration in textiles and apparel faded and they are more heavily concentrated than U.S. affiliates and more export-oriented in both electrical machinery and transport equipment.

JEL-codes: F19 F23 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2000-08
Note: ITI
View list of references View citations in EconPapers

Published relationship to a non-chapter. This should not happen. Please contact NBER.

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.nber.org/papers/w7292.pdf (application/pdf)
Access to the full text is generally limited to series subscribers, however if the top level domain of the client browser is in a developing country or transition economy free access is provided. More information about subscriptions and free access is available at http://www.nber.org/wwphelp.html.

Related works:
Chapter: Affiliates of U.S. and Japanese Multinationals in East Asian Production and Trade (2000)
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: http://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:nbr:nberwo:7292

Ordering information: This working paper can be ordered from
http://www.nber.org/papers/w7292
The price is Paper copy available by mail.

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in NBER Working Papers from National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc
Address: National Bureau of Economic Research, 1050 Massachusetts Avenue Cambridge, MA 02138, U.S.A.
Contact information at EDIRC.
Series data maintained by ().